Graphics look ok, and you can now adjust the brake bias via the D pad.The handling also looks a lot better, but its a shame we don't get to see any AI.

Handling look F1 2011 with a few tweaks honestly, the car still looks heavy at turn in and not quick and alive like a single seater should.Same Codemasters crap, add a few Rally like slides and call it a day.

Handling look F1 2011 with a few tweaks honestly, the car still looks heavy at turn in and not quick and alive like a single seater should.Same Codemasters crap, add a few Rally like slides and call it a day.

The track is nice, but that's not because of the game.

Without actually driving it I can't see how you can read into it that much.

It looks like it drives and responds to inputs very similarly to 2011, with some differences like the big rear locking at one moment, which didn't look sutil at all (no small slides, just big slides).
But that's just an impression, until the game is released and we fine tune controls and setup we can't really pass judgement, be it good like Kvothe nor bad like mine.

That's if i decide to bother with another Bugmasters title, of course.

Hey guys, just to let you know that over at my website we're running a competition to win this game on any platform. Your odds of winning are pretty good! A little bit of promotion, I admit, but also a decent chance to win

Eh, I sort of expected more from the games by now, to be honest. It looks like Codemasters have taken the Call of Duty approrach and decided it's in their best interest to market a slightly-repainted version of the same game over and over each year--which wouldn't be a bad idea if the game they were repainting was the best in its class. Unfortunately, it isn't--apart from DRS and a co-op championship online, I didn't see anything in F1 2011 that would've warranted the purchase of a completely new game over F1 2010. I feel the same way about F1 2012.

F1 2010 looked and felt like a beta version of an upcoming game when compared with something like Forza 4 or even Forza 3. In comparison to Forza, the game is lacking a photo mode, an option to save replays, an option to view complete results history, and a forgiving 'rewind' function. In comparison to past F1 games, it's lacking a 'challenge' mode that lets you take the role of certain drivers and attempt to match or better their real-life results in certain circumstances, and it's also lacking a 'real events' mode which simulates the specific races as they happened. This is stuff that's all been done before, and I can't see how it would hurt the average player to include these features in the game. Not to mention the fact that the lighting and physics engines are a step behind Forza's, and visibly so.

As for things I'd like to see--apart from the obvious motive of reaping huge amounts of cash from the use of the F1 name, I've never understood why they feel it's better to put out a brand new game every year. I would've much preferred it if, instead, they looked back over the last ten or so years and modeled every one of those seasons into a single comprehensive F1 experience, for use in career or free-race mode. Driver swaps and team changes would occur as they did in real life over the course of a player's career, and rather than putting out a new game each year, they could release each new season--track updates, driver swaps, new cars and all--as DLC, and extend the length of career mode by one year each time.

You could select the years you wanted your career to span or you could do an 'unlimited' career mode with a specific car/driver lineup from a certain season, as career mode currently is. In free race mode, you could pick any year of cars, any driver (or your own driver), and race on any track that was used in the seasons available in the game (e.g. 2006 cars at Singapore or 2012 cars at 2002 Hockenheim). You could even do a custom race between cars of different seasons, if you wanted, too.

This is just the tip of the iceberg--I've written a ton of ideas for the game across different threads here already. All of the stuff in this post is perfectly possible with a little bit of effort and a properly-built physics engine like the one used in Forza, which allows for competition between three different decades of Le Mans Prototypes (not to mention everything else between a Nissan Micra and a Ferrari F40). I wouldn't mind the graphics remaining as they are now if the gameplay was good enough, but as it stands, F1 2012 doesn't have the edge in either deparment. Don't get me wrong--I'm a huge fan of F1 and I'd love nothing more than a smooth-running, well-developed game, but I feel that Codemasters have quite honestly failed to deliver on the potential they have available to them with today's computing power.

When you consider everything an F1 game could realistically be and then look at what we have instead, it's a small wonder a lot of very eager buyers lost interest after Codemasters' second release.

I agree with Afterburner. The F1 series is well into 'expansion pack' territory now. Which may be enough reason to buy it for some but after F12011 I decided enough was enough. There just wasn't enough to motivate me to do it all again with slightly different cars and some new tracks and I traded in the game a few weeks later. It just felt like the same game with some of the same glaring issues. I'm not sure if this has been 'fixed' but there was always concerns about AI cars not setting real times etc. That was always a big turn off for me. And the slow dripping of screenshots etc just doesn't get me hyped like it did with F12010.

Speaking of developments.. I wonder how a 'real race' mode would work. Theory.. after every race the game downloads files that contain GPS car data for that race together with some other information. This data then creates a selectable 'real race' inside the game where if run with just the AI cars, would be an exact replica of what happened in the GP.. or near enough as the GPS data and game engine would allow.

But the point being you get to take part in this 'real race'. And if you influence any other car, the game takes over and controls that car for the remainder of the race but uses the data to map in average lap times etc so the car performs roughly how it performed before you influenced it. Any other car you don't influence ahead of you is running to the GPS data.

The point being that you get to take part in a grand prix and your actions change the race.. and obviously the goal being to win and beat the guy you saw win on Sunday.

I agree with Afterburner. The F1 series is well into 'expansion pack' territory now. Which may be enough reason to buy it for some but after F12011 I decided enough was enough. There just wasn't enough to motivate me to do it all again with slightly different cars and some new tracks and I traded in the game a few weeks later. It just felt like the same game with some of the same glaring issues. I'm not sure if this has been 'fixed' but there was always concerns about AI cars not setting real times etc. That was always a big turn off for me. And the slow dripping of screenshots etc just doesn't get me hyped like it did with F12010.

Speaking of developments.. I wonder how a 'real race' mode would work. Theory.. after every race the game downloads files that contain GPS car data for that race together with some other information. This data then creates a selectable 'real race' inside the game where if run with just the AI cars, would be an exact replica of what happened in the GP.. or near enough as the GPS data and game engine would allow.

But the point being you get to take part in this 'real race'. And if you influence any other car, the game takes over and controls that car for the remainder of the race but uses the data to map in average lap times etc so the car performs roughly how it performed before you influenced it. Any other car you don't influence ahead of you is running to the GPS data.

The point being that you get to take part in a grand prix and your actions change the race.. and obviously the goal being to win and beat the guy you saw win on Sunday.

Not sure if it would work but it sounded good in my head.

Paradigm Games got something like this to work properly on the N64, complete with 'Television Mode' where you could simply sit back and watch the race from the trackside cameras or the onboard of any car you wanted, at any time. If it worked close enough to the real deal on the N64--even the part where the AI run on their own if you influence their race--it should be a cake walk on today's consoles.

Imagine an F1 game that not only gave you a decade's worth of races to just sit back and watch, but also gave you the opportunity to become a part of these races. I'd pay triple what Codemasters are charging for that opportunity, lol.

I was also thinking that part of the problem might be that they're marketing to the wrong audience, as well. They've been trying to sell F1 to the general public by simplifying it for the 'casual gamer', but most of us who are fanatical enough about F1 to buy an F1 game are a niche market concerned with realism as much as enjoyability. Sure, the all-assists-on arcade-style mode is fine, but the half-developed physics and bogus AI aren't good enough for those of us who're purists and really -know- what an F1 race is supposed to be like. You aren't supposed to be able to win races in an HRT on a one-stop strategy at a track like Malaysia, racing on the toughest difficulty. They'd be better off developing an air-tight, polished game with various DLC opportunities (70's-80's cars, for instance) for a dedicated market who've been waiting since the invention of the video game for a proper cyber-F1 experience than they would trying to water it down for the general public, in my opinion.

The obvious problem was getting the physics/grip levels accurate in order to produce similar laptimes. The good sim racers could be ~5 seconds/lap faster than the real car making the experience pointless.

I haven't tried it since the beta, don't know if they've figured out a way to make it better.

You'd have to have an ultra-realistic sim with very accurate grip levels (including changes due to temp/rubbering-in) and tyre degradation. If you just smudge the physics a bit to make it similar in laptimes for the average or good sim-racer the aliens will be a few seconds faster than the real car. If you match it to the aliens the rest will be seconds off the pace and find it pointless.

The biggest problem with this game is the fact that codemasters are notoriusly lazy, they are more than happy to spend money on marketing (see the davidson hype) than put the effort into making a good game. Then when they have made a game they are slow in releasing fixes for it. They know they can get away with it because if you dare say a bad word or make a criticism on their official forums, then a legion of Codies fanboys will swarm on you for daring not to enjoy the game. Even worse, for most of them this is their first experience of an F1 game so they have no idea just how good some of the older games were, and just what features are missing, that even a 16 bit console managed to fit in.

The obvious problem was getting the physics/grip levels accurate in order to produce similar laptimes. The good sim racers could be ~5 seconds/lap faster than the real car making the experience pointless.

I haven't tried it since the beta, don't know if they've figured out a way to make it better.

You'd have to have an ultra-realistic sim with very accurate grip levels (including changes due to temp/rubbering-in) and tyre degradation. If you just smudge the physics a bit to make it similar in laptimes for the average or good sim-racer the aliens will be a few seconds faster than the real car. If you match it to the aliens the rest will be seconds off the pace and find it pointless.

Well, if that's the case, then maybe you don't need to simulate lap times--instead, just simulate the gap between the cars after each lap. This way you can race at different difficulty levels but the race still plays out the same way.

Of course, you could also secretly keep the lap times true-to-life one of the difficulty levels. Which one this would be would depend largely on how tough the game is--if we're talking Codies-F1 standards, then it'd be Legend.

Another one of my biggest gripes about the series. Their excuse, on their own forums, was that the FOM graphics 'don't show the player everything we want to show them'.

... okay?

Until Codemasters' F1 efforts, I had never seen an F1 game that didn't use FOM graphics. Very bizarre decision indeed, and to me it makes it feel a little less like F1. I loved playing the classic games and watching the sector time comparisons come up on the screen during quali just like in real life... the fact that they were the real graphics added in that little extra thrill of realism to me.

I probably sound like a Codemasters-hater because I've had very few positive things to say about their games so far. I hope you all believe me when I say I don't have an agenda against them--I just wish they did a better job with the F1 games.

I'd much prefer it with them. With the speed dial the same as it on the T.V as well. F1-06 had it.

Typical cheapness from Codemasters. The graphics on their F1 games are about 5 years behind.

And the rest mate. I'd say with few exceptions, the F1CE edition graphics were miles better, and thats 6 years old. Not only that but the sounds were better as well, these latest ones sound like bee's trapped in a tin can

Another one of my biggest gripes about the series. Their excuse, on their own forums, was that the FOM graphics 'don't show the player everything we want to show them'.

... okay?

Until Codemasters' F1 efforts, I had never seen an F1 game that didn't use FOM graphics. Very bizarre decision indeed, and to me it makes it feel a little less like F1. I loved playing the classic games and watching the sector time comparisons come up on the screen during quali just like in real life... the fact that they were the real graphics added in that little extra thrill of realism to me.

That is something I sorely miss. F1 '98 and F1 '99 really nailed the use of official timing graphics back in the day. I don't really care much for Codemasters' HUD graphics at all.

Personally I really liked F12011. Aside from the 11/11 cheat, which can be solved by using a lower setting (I find if you get the setting right, the racing can become incrediably fun) & perhaps AI cars weaving about in qualifing sessions which can be annoying to say the least. I don't know what are all of these bugs / glitches that other people say need to be fixed? (my PS3 is offline, so I haven't upgraded f12011 since purchasing it either).

In terms of improvements for f12012, I think it would be great if the would introduce things like the tyres graining during a race...but if a driver is skillful enough, then you can get them to 'come back' to you (a bit like Webber's soft tyres at Sliverstone, during his 1st stint). Or the driver having to find that small operating window that will get the best out of the tyres, either through car setup or driving style (like in real F1 in 2012). Also it would be nice to have more feeling when you make a setup change & perhaps telementary data of throttle or braking traces etc when you are in the pits. Also having different track temperatures, affecting car setup & tyre wear, so having to factor that into the equation. I know these things are not really in keeping with Codemasters more 'arcadey' approach to F1 games, so they probably won't see the light of day, but it would be nice to have some of them as an option at least.

I do feel improvements to the AI & career mode progression can be made (I've now done more GPs in F12011 than Ayrton Senna & have still yet to be offered a Ferrari contract ), Furthermore I really miss the option to do a 50% distance race or just do a single GP in a car of my choice.

But basically what I am saying is, if there is enough to make the driving / racing side of it feel new, or different then I will fork out the dough to buy it. A bit like the way KERS & DRS made the racing in F12011 feel new & different to F1 2010. The Brake Bias adjustment feature sounds promising, but it would be great to also have something tyre management being more of a factor in F12012 aswell.

However if f12012 is simply an updated f12011 with small graphical improvements here & there, but ultimately no significant changes to the actual game itself. Then I probably won't bother with it.

I do feel improvements to the AI & career mode progression can be made (I've now done more GPs in F12011 than Ayrton Senna & have still yet to be offered a Ferrari contract ), Furthermore I really miss the option to do a 50% distance race or just do a single GP in a car of my choice.

I'd love to see the game embrace an SBK Generations approach and let you build up through the support races - eg. GP2 and 3 (they use the same circuits so it wouldn't be a major amount of work, just some different physics for the smaller cars).

2010 was reasonably fun if a bit 'shallow' and the obvious issues of course.

Didn't bother with 2011 as before I got it, there was already talk or various bugs, 11/11 etc and talking to others didn't give much hope for better handling.

Given the above, I'm unlikely to try 2012. I'm sure the reviews will all be fairly positive given the demographic but I'm not exactly banking on Codies giving me the game I want this time either. Just as a microcosm, the FOM graphics issue alone is damned annoying.